Today was Zeebrugge. We had thought that we would stay on board all day, and this morning while it was grey and rainy that seemed sensible. But by half-past eleven we were getting stir crazy and the weather was improving so we took the shuttle bus to Blankenberg.

Before we did that, however, we had a rather strange experience. We went back to the cabin to get ready and we found an officer in it. He explained that they had received a report from the previous occupants of the cabin that they’d lost their passports somewhere, probably on the ship, and he was about to look for them. Fair enough, I thought, although we hadn’t seen anything, even in the safe. Then I remembered a problem I’d had on a cruise a few years ago: I thought I’d lost a credit card, I couldn’t find it anywhere, so we reported it missing. Then having made myself safe I did a lengthy, thorough search and found it. It was in the safe, tucked under a lip of folded metal that was part of the structure of the safe; hard to find, and in fact very easy to miss. Could the same thing have happened to these passports? So I opened the safe, took all of our things out, and had a good rootle around, deliberately exploring all the nooks and crannies; and tucked into exactly the same sort of crevice was a passport. So obviously I fished it out and gave it to the officer. Ot’s possible that there was only one missing, in fact – I can’t believe a couple could lose two passports in the same cabin in two different ways.

When we reached Blankenberg we walked along the sea-front, then round by the harbour and back towards town, eventually finding a restaurant where we had some lunch. Then we walked back through town, where Val bought 500gms of Belgian chocolate from a serious chocolatiere. You get a lot of chocolates in 500gms; we reached the stage where Val had made lot of choices, they weighed it and anounced “you need more..” so it was back to the counter to try to choose more. This wasn’t helped by the twin facts that a) Val couldn’t remember the flavours she’d been told two minutes earlier (she blames the Belgian beer with lunch), and b) the shop assistant was Belgian and was trying to describe the chocolates in a (to her) foreign language. But we got to 500 gms eventually. It will be interesting to taste them when we get home.

This afternoon was the Great British Sailaway, coupled with the announcement of the winner of the draw for the free world cruise. It wasn’t either of us. We’re currently sat in the Crows Nest, in the sun, relieving our disappointment with wine.

This is the last post I shall be able to do from the cruise itself. I’ll do a summary and our views in the ship & the cruise after we get home.